UniT, after having mine for a few weeks, I have to question why I didn’t sell a kidney to get a 36er sooner!
Yea Martha!
Great work Martha! I’m going to try to find your idling video again,as I want to learn idling and hopping. I got 12 hops the other day! I want to learn to go up and down curbs and maybe rolling hops sometime for dirt roads. I’ll start looking on you tube and see what comes up. Keep up the good work all. And Allucard, tires aren’t that hard to change. I think I am going to get a hookworm for the 26. Happy riding all.
Way to GO and keep going Martha!! Most excellent!
+1 on the Hookworm Y@<3
Thanks for all the inspiring posts everyone! The Learning Journal is awesome!
Happy UniPlay All!
Hey 57UniRider…that’s impressive on a 24" non-stop. 
Stay happy,
Joseph.
A big first for me today. After acquiring a 36’r a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been steadily getting used to it. But I have had to use an assist for mounting and take-offs. Today I was able to successfully freemount it and ride off. First time I’ve been able to do that, and I was really excited. (I used the 2-step rolling start method.) Now to get to the point where I can do it repeatedly…
+1
Hello Everyone!
Wow! This is a busy place.
All of my Buddies showed up at once.
Thanks for the Kudos and encouragement!
KRJames, Animal Cage, Jojoxie, Kickstand (been wondering how you are doing!), Young at Heart (way to go on the hopping!), and hello to Alucard as well…
Greetings also to UniTographer and LanceB.
No, I don’t think I’ll be getting a 36" in this life time.
If (WHEN) I conquer my dormant 26" I will think I deserve a gold medal in the Olympics!
All you that are riding 26ers…
Young at Heart, etc…
How long are your cranks?
Great seeing everyone here!
Happy Riding!
Hello 57UniRider,
Congratulation on the 2 miles with your 24".
I ride my 26" with 150mm cranks and tend to believe that shorter cranks would be better for me (more fluent motio) I haven’t tried the 125mm holes yet and i think that 125mm may be too short for some of the climbs on my usual round (short but steep), maybe this will be no problem when manage to refine my technique.
No doubt you can conquer your 26",
as long as you are using the right tire for the right terrain. What tire do you have now? Mine is equipped with a Duro 3" which is great for snow, gravel, mud etc. and good for dirt and grass. For riding on asphalt it’s way too knobby and heavy. Also it rides best with low tire pressure which means much rolling resistance.
BTW, just finished assembling my 36" 
(well, i got no spacers with the hub so i have to wait until i can mount the disc brake, and the spokes need to be adjusted with right tension and the wheel to be trued). Had the tire pumped to 30psi and rode about 2 -3 meters along a corridor at the company.
WHOAH! 
Soooooooooo super :D:D:D:D:D:D (Really can’t stop grinning)
Greetings
Byc
Soooooo jealous!
– UniT
I’ll be interested to hear how your relationship with the 36" develops…I have a love/hate thing going on with my 36…the 29er still gives me far more pleasure…
Have fun,
Joseph.
crank length
I have duel cranks, but have only used the 165 (137’s too). I may buy a hookworm to try. Currently have a bloody elbow. A gust of wind gave me a push on the 26 and 8 came off and couldn’t run it out. Oh well:( Going to the beach with my 24 Sat. will see how that goes 
Guess what i got =D its not a uni… but it will go along nicely with my uni…
http://www.canon.ca/inetCA/products?m=gp&pid=20670
(please note i am a nikon guy… but when it came to camcorders i liked this one most)
Wow, that’s a nice one! very impressed, congrats on that!
(on a unicycle-related note, I nailed my second successful freemount on my 36 today. I’ll get there eventually!)
It’s great to see all the folks still participating here, the new feats accomplished (go 57UR!) and the new wheels gotten.
Updating my story, I headed out early in the morning a week ago Saturday and took my uni to a city park parking lot. I put on my gear and practiced riding, supporting myself against the car, for maybe 15 or 20 minutes until forum member zakking showed up. He was trekking from Lexington to Raleigh and his route took him within a mile of that park. He wasn’t up for a ride but he did sell me his Nimbus 26" Muni, including a Duro Wildlife and an unused Maxxis Ardent. The Hookworm has already been ordered too.
So that was mission accomplished. I now have a big step up to aspire toward, and as much as anything I can look at it and see for myself what you’re all talking about when you discuss this stuff. Man that’s a big wheel, and it’s just a 26’er. My imagination fails me at this point when it comes to what 29" and 36" wheels are like.
But as practice sessions go, Saturday was pretty much a bust; probably more harm done than good really. There’s a long list of possible excuses, from being in an unfamiliar location and out of my barely established routine, to not normally excelling at physical tasks that early in the day and being particularly sleep-deprived that morning, to being anxious about making the link-up with Zak and various other plans I had for the day. Whatever it was, I regressed a lot. On every attempt I bailed out as soon as I took my hand off my support, zero success.
My next time out was late Tuesday afternoon and I found that even back on my familiar patio, I was still shaky in the legs and unsteady for a while. It took maybe 30 minutes to feel like I’d gotten back to where I’d been on Thursday before my Saturday morning adventure. But I kept making progress from there and got to where I was free of the wall and felt like I was actually riding the thing. The sensation on my better tries was that my equilibrium system had finally kicked in and made the connection to this mode of locomotion, and I was sometimes finding myself making automatic corrections as I rode; kinda like hardware acceleration had been enabled, in computer terms. That was nice.
The third outing was on Friday and was maybe just a little better than Tuesday, a greater percentage of successful attempts even if I didn’t go much farther. I was consistently riding off the edge of the patio and sometimes successfully negotiating the transition to the lawn, before the ruts and tree roots and grass clumps bogged me down. I guess a 20x1.75" tire pumped to 60 psi to keep the rim off the bricks under my static weight isn’t ideal for unpaved stuff. But I was managing unsupported rides of maybe 20 feet at the best, and able to change my pace and occasionally make some more or less not uncontrolled changes of direction, so I’m feeling pretty good about that.
I think I’m going to need to find a new place to practice. I’ve basically outgrown my patio at this point, although practicing forward and backward pedalling along the wall with the handy window ledge still feels like productive practice. I wish I had a nice seafront footpath nearby with a lovely blue handrail at just the right height, like I’ve seen in someone’s photos here. I’m going to have to come up with something.
Hey LargeEddie, it’s so heartening to read other people having similar issues and equally similar revelations! I’ve (stupidly) started my own learning thread Finally got started… not realising this was a general thread for everyone learning but my experiences and progress seem very close to you.
Good luck and keep us posted.
UL
Thanks UL! I’ve been reading your thread too, just haven’t had any words of wisdom to share there yet. But you’re doing great and my hat’s off to you for posting a video of your progress. I haven’t had the nerve to try that yet.
I surmise from the earliest posts here that this topic actually started as NotSoYoungOne’s personal learning thread, but lots of other folks barged in on it and posted updates on their own experiences which NSYO graciously welcomed. I thought about starting my own topic instead of posting here, but I guess I must have lacked the confidence that I would get far enough for it justify a thread of its own. Still to be seen really…
I am one of those that have barged in on occasion. Thanks NSYO for starting this. It is a great resource for those learning as it is a one stop shop for new uni riders to get both ideas and support -even if NSYO didn’t mean for it to be. All those individual threads get lost and buried as the person stops posting and the info for a new learner who want to just lurk is lost.
You mean this one ?
I am very lucky to have this nearby.
Yes, exactly that one! (Even with the tadpole trike that’s been clone-tooled out. I’d totally ride that too. :))
And yes, I agree, you’re very lucky to have it nearby. I hope it’s still working out well for you.
The rail was very useful to get me started. It gave me confidence to hang on to it, then later just touch it occasionally. However, I got to the stage when it became a liability, because when I tried to let go of the rail and see how far I could ride, I found that I was subconsciously leaning toward the rail and then UPDing. After that I just used the rail to get moving, then push away from the rail completely. This allowed me to soon ride 200 feet on a couple of occasions.
On my 10th hour I tried free-mounting and managed two successful kick-back free-mounts by the end of the session.
I need to consolidate that now, and learn to turn.
Good luck with your own riding